Lawyer Asks Court to Cancel Finmeccanica Helicopter Deal

A lawyer who gained media attention in the New Delhi rape case on Wednesday filed a petition in India’s highest court seeking cancelation of a 560- million-euro helicopter deal awarded by India to Italian defense contractor Finmeccanica SpA..

The filing of the petition follow allegations of bribery by Italian prosecutors in the 2010 deal, which led to the arrest Tuesday of the chief executive of Finmeccanica, Giuseppe Orsi.

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Soon after the arrest, the Indian government ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation, the federal investigation agency, to probe the order for the purchase of a dozen AW101 helicopters from the AgustaWestland helicopter unit of Finmeccanica.

In his petition to the Supreme Court of India, lawyer Manohar Lal Sharma asked the court to direct either a special investigation team or the government’s Central Vigilance Commission to investigate those who have allegedly taken bribes.

Mr. Sharma is also seeking the cancelation of the deal with Finmeccanica.

A spokesman for the Indian defense ministry declined to comment on the petition, saying that “In a democratic country, everybody has a right to file a public interest petition.”

Mr. Sharma was recently in the news for declaring that he represented three of the five men accused in the rape and killing of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in New Delhi in December. Mr. Sharma made the claim that the three men would plead innocent to the charges against them, including rape, kidnapping and murder, before he had been recognized by a Delhi court as a defense attorney in the high-profile case. The lawyer does not now represent any of the men. He said in an interview he withdrew from representing any of the accused after the Supreme Court quashed a petition he had filed seeking to move the trial outside New Delhi.

Mr. Sharma said in an interview he filed the public interest petition on the helicopter deal because “no-one has come forward to fight this crucial thing.”

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